Elizabeth Warren to challenge Scott Brown in Massachusetts Senate race

Democrat Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School professor and critic of Wall Street, will take a shot at challenging incumbent Republican Scott Brown for the U.S. Senate seat he occupies.

Warren will on Wednesday formally declare she's running the Massachusetts Senate primary, the Boston Globe reports, and will set out to meet MBTA commuters before traveling across the state.

In a statement released Tuesday, Warren said:

"The pressures on middle-class families are worse than ever, but it is the big corporations that get their way in Washington. I want to change that. I will work my heart out to earn the trust of the people of Massachusetts."

The Globe writes that Brown "stunned the party establishment" when in January 2010 he beat out Martha Coakley in a special election for the seat formerly occupied by liberal icon, Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Brown, the paper adds, is seeking his first full, six-year term next year.

A recent Boston Globe poll, meantime, showed Brown as the most popular major politician in the traditionally Democratic state.

An advocate of tighter bank regulation and stronger protection for mortgagees and other consumers, Warren gained prominence in the wake of the 2008 stock market collapse, as chairman of a congressional panel to oversee the Troubled Assets Relief Program.

President Barack Obama then chose her to set up a new consumer protection agency — the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — which began under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

However, the Washington Post reports, "when it became clear that congressional Republicans would block her nomination to head the agency" she returned to Massachusetts and "began to lay the groundwork for her Senate campaign."

While Warren has never run for elected political office, her recent high-profile position in Washington may give her an edge in the race for the seat, CBS News reports.

The Globe writes further on Warren:

Warren, the 62-year old daughter of a janitor and store clerk, grew up in Oklahoma. She attended public schools and universities, eventually becoming a bankruptcy expert at Harvard.

According to the AP, Warren faces opposition in many forms, though chiefly from Republicans, who have "already branded Warren as a liberal academic whose Harvard ties put her out of touch with the concerns of working families" and whose whose roots are in Oklahoma, not Massachusetts." 

However, even fellow Democrats have voiced skepticism, including Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, who says she lacks political experience.